Quick ambient occlusion pass in MAX 2018

[Anonymous]

In the past, I used the Mental Ray AO shader for a quick ambient occlusion pass when I needed it.  I see that Mental Ray is no longer available in Max 2018.  Is there another quick was to render an Ambient occlusion pass that DOESN't involve replacing all the materials in my scene and messing with skylights?

[spacefrog_]

Mental Ray for 3ds Max 2018 is available here ( free of charge ). Network rendering will not work though without a specific license, they ( Nvidia ) don't sell any longer AFAIK

https://forum.nvidia-arc.com/showthread.php?16474-Mental-Ray-for-3ds-Max-2018-plugin-downloads

You might to have to register in the forum to see the download links ( not sure )

[Anonymous]

You could probably use the Quicksilver hardware-renderer for this. Assign a 100% self illuminating material to your scene and check Ambient occlusion in the render settings.

[Richard.Vivanco]

Check this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKaKlOb_ySQ

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the video link.  Sadly, this is a (rather poor) tutorial for doing exactly what I said I wasn't keen on doing - which is replacing all the materials in the scene, and then ripping out and replacing the lighting with a skylight, (and resetting the ambient lighting).

I was rather hoping that one of the new renderers would have allowed me to do a quick ambient occlusion pass without all of the rigamarole shown in the tutorial.   Mental Ray was great for that.

I could download and install the Mental Ray plugin, but it looks like it only allows for single-frame renders, and I want to an AO pass for a series of 90 frame animations.

Using Quicksilver with self-illuminating materials doesn't strike me as being an easier than using the scanline renderer - plus I get nicer shadows from the latter.

From the replies here, it looks like I'm simply out of luck, so what I will do is create a duplicate of my .max files and using the scanline renderer with a skylight.

I just liked the convenience of being able to include an ambient occlusion pass as a render add-on. I'll miss that.

Thanks everyone for your responses.

[spacefrog_]

The Mental ray download for Max 2018 perfectly allows to render frame sequences or animations . The license is the same as the one of the main renderer now shipping with Max - Arnold

As long as you render out from a licensed 3ds Max installation, you are perfectly fine - you even can use the batch renderer directly from the Max interface to render your sequences ( as long as you start the render from the interactive Max session). A thing Arnold does'nt allow AFAIK

Update:

Seems the current / last version of Arnold renderer ( V1.2.917 ) has the license check removed when using the batch render dialog to batch render out from an interactive 3ds Max xsession. In the earlier days of Arnold, this scenario triggered a separate Arnold license check, which failed if you did'nt buy an additional arnold license. Glad that this restriction has been removed ...

[Anonymous]

1. Save a 'Scene State' called "Textures_Pass" and choose Scene Parts of 'Materials' and 'Light Properties' only.
2. Create an Arnold 'Standard Surface' shader.
   1. Set Base Color to 1
   2. Set Specular Reflections 'General' to 0
   3. Under 'Emission' add a map, and select Arnold -> Surface -> Ambient Occlusion
3. Apply this material to all objects in your scene.
4. Select and turn Off all lights in your scene.
   • Adjust the 'Samples' of the Ambient Occlusion map to get the best quality vs render time.
5. Save another 'Scene State' called "AO_Pass" and choose Scene Parts of 'Materials' and 'Light Properties' only.

That should give you the flexibility to do any AO passes that you need - all using Arnold.

I hope that helps!

[fla3d]

You can get a very simple AO pass in Arnold with no need to apply a material to all objects or using state set by using AOV that is the equivalent to render elements.  Try this:

1 - Create a material AOV Write Float, put AO or something in the AOV Name and plug an Ambient Occlusion shader in the input like the image below.

2 - On the render setup, go to the AOVs tab and add this AOV Write Float material to the AOV Shaders below. Then click in Add AOV File to create an AOV and then in the custom field you add the same AOV Name that you put in the shader.

3 - Then you can add this custom AOV and it will render an AO pass straight from you render like before.

[Anonymous]

Followed along, but no results. Need an example of how many samples you used to work. By default it's "3" and I saw nothing but glowing white objects, even when set to 10, 20, and 100. Setting much higher crashed Max.

By "Turn off all lights" does that include the default environment light? I set that to 0 and still - nothing but glowing white objects. I don't have any other lights in the scene.

Have latest version and install of Arnold.

[Anonymous]

"and plug an Ambient Occlusion shader in the input " - How exactly / where are you getting the node / shader on the left? I'm digging through all the nodes and can't find this.

Please assume we're all pretty new to Arnold, and some of us have no idea what an AOV is.

[Stephen.Blair]

The Ambi

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@Anonymous wrote:

"and plug an Ambient Occlusion shader in the input " - How exactly / where are you getting the node / shader on the left? I'm digging through all the nodes and can't find this.

Please assume we're all pretty new to Arnold, and some of us have no idea what an AOV is.

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The Ambient Occlusion node is under Maps > Arnold > Surface

[fla3d]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Followed along, but no results. Need an example of how many samples you used to work. By default it's "3" and I saw nothing but glowing white objects, even when set to 10, 20, and 100. Setting much higher crashed Max.

By "Turn off all lights" does that include the default environment light? I set that to 0 and still - nothing but glowing white objects. I don't have any other lights in the scene.

Have latest version and install of Arnold.

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First, did you click the Add button to create the AOV?

Then you will only see it in the render window while using the Active Shade in this tab:

When use the Production Render you need to set a render output on the common tab and then Arnold will save the AOV in the same folder using the same name as a prefix.

In this example I'm using the default settings but with this procedure you don't apply the material to your objects, it will only show up in the AOV. If you want to apply the material you have to create a "map to material" and plug the Ambient occlusion map on it.

Hope you get it all clear now, we are all new to Arnold yet. 

[Anonymous]

Sorry - this response / forum isn't intuitive to helpful communication. I was responding to dj.nicke's material method in that post.

My question for you specifically was:

"and plug an Ambient Occlusion shader in the input " - How exactly / where are you getting the node / shader on the left? I'm digging through all the nodes and can't find this."

For your method - I figured that part out by dragging the node out (I've basically never used the Slate Editor, only know how to shut it off) and choosing it, but kind of lost me in the 2nd and 3rd parts of your guide:

"Then click in Add AOV File to create an AOV and then in the custom field you add the same AOV Name that you put in the shader." - Specifically "now you put that in the shader". I've named and added my shader, but no idea how to put it in the 3rd blue-line slot you underlined in your screenshot or what to do exactly after I've made this. Never used an "AOV".

[fla3d]

I recorded a quick tutorial, hope now you can get it:

[Anonymous]

I followed your video exactly and never got a "AO" in the drop down in my render window.

[fla3d]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I followed your video exactly and never got a "AO" in the drop down in my render window.

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It only appears in the Active Shade window, for the final render it will just save the AO in the same place as your saved render.

[jibijib]

Also followed your video to a T - the scene renders black.

Do you have any lights?

Bring back mentalray NVidia, ffs.

[fla3d]

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@jibijib wrote:

Also followed your video to a T - the scene renders black.

Do you have any lights?

Bring back mentalray NVidia, ffs.

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No lights or materials are needed to get an AO pass, are you getting a black render on the RGBA or the AO pass? Maybe there's an object blocking the scene?

[Stephen.Blair]

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@jibijib wrote:

Also followed your video to a T - the scene renders black.

Do you have any lights?

Bring back mentalray NVidia, ffs.

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It sounds like the custom AOV wasn't added, you may need just one more click (you have to click Add to List and then Add)

If you want something quick, and you're using a recent version of MAXtoA, you can use the Shader Override feature. That will override the shaders in your beauty render.

[Anonymous]

Late to the party here, but it took me less than one minute to figure out how to create AO with Quicksilver and have my render complete (on a scene with 6 million polys) using the method suggested above.